September 22, 2007 - Tampa Tribune (FL)

At Long Last, Free Man Can Look Up

By Daniel Ruth

Sitting in the prison van taking him from the Tomoka Correctional
Institution to his home, his wife, his salvation in Hudson, Richard
Paey began to experience something odd , something he hadn't
noticed about himself the past four years of his life.

"In prison, no one ever looks up," Paey said. "Inmates
rarely look up at the sun."

Now, sitting in the van, Richard Paey found himself gazing
out the window, and slowly he began to raise his eyes as the
landscape passed by.

"I looked out the window and saw -- things," Paey
said softly. "The sun seemed brighter. The air seemed fresher.
I had to look up." And life, at long last, seemed more just.

Only hours earlier, the 48-year-old Paey was more commonly
known as Florida Department of Corrections offender R29228, a
convicted drug trafficker not scheduled to be free until Jan.
22, 2028.

About four years ago, in an egregious exercise of prosecutorial
abuse that makes a Star Chamber seem like an Edwardian era exercise
in gentility, Paey was convicted in Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court
of seven counts of possession and trafficking in a controlled
substance by fraud -- namely oxycodone and hydrocodone -- leading
to a 25-year prison sentence.

But this defendant was hardly the Al Capone of the Americans
With Disabilities Act.

Paey, then in leg braces and using crutches to get around,
was a man in extreme, excruciating, unrelenting pain, the result
of severe back injuries sustained in a car accident, a botched
surgery and the onset of multiple sclerosis. Job was more happy-go-lucky.

Not a shred of evidence was produced proving Paey ever sold
and/or shared his pain medications with others, which the defendant
always maintained were legally obtained from his physician with
a prescription.

Indeed, the eagle-eyed detectives and prosecutors never provided
evidence that Paey forged prescriptions.

Still, despite a weaker case than the trial of Socrates, it
was off to the hoosegow for Paey, who was now using a wheelchair
and fitted with a morphine pump, which administered, at state
expense, more drugs than the inmate had been convicted of illegally
possessing.

Pain and Insanity

During his years in prison, Richard Paey become an international
cause celebre not only for a better understanding of pain management
in America, but also against certifiably insane sentencing guidelines,
which would condemn a very sick, infirm man to a de facto life
sentence.

While even the 2nd District Court of Appeal sympathized with
Paey's clearly dubious sentence, it eventually fell to the state
clemency board, made up of Gov. Charlie Crist, Chief Financial
Officer Alex Sink, Attorney General Bill McCollum and Agricultural
Commissioner Charles Bronson, to trump the cruel intractability
of the criminal justice system with some simple common decency.

John P. Flannery II, Paey's lawyer, in a powerfully written
petition before the clemency board, summed up his client's predicament,
noting, "Finally, in a civilized society, we do not punish
individuals who are sick simply because they are sick and because
they require medical treatment -- whether it is prescription
drugs or anything else."

As well, Flannery said the mission before the board was to
argue, "This was a case where the law got it wrong."
He added, "We wanted to tell the board: You can trust this
guy not to embarrass you."

Apparently, Flannery more than made his point.

A Good Day

Crist moved, not only to grant clemency, but a full pardon,
which was unanimously approved. "They call it justice,"
the governor said. "That's what we're doing here today.
We aim to right a wrong and exercise compassion, and to do it
with grace."

Richard Paey began the day a felon. By sunset he was an innocent
man.

Back at the prison, a bit of chaos ensued.

Pardons of incarcerated prisoners are so rare, no one knew
exactly how to process Paey's release.

And in one final cruel joke, before he was informed he would
be freed, Paey was rolled in his wheelchair to sit in front of
an intake office, which processes prisoners into the system.
How amusing.

"I was having a mild coronary," Paey said.

In the van, on the way home to his family, the corrections
officers transporting Paey, never having seen a pardon before,
passed the paperwork back and forth between them in amazement.

Finally, the long trip ended in Hudson with a reunion with
his college-sweetheart wife and daughters and mother -- and a
pepperoni pizza.

Resumption Of Freedom

By Friday morning, after his first night back in his own bed,
Paey was busy on the phone trying to get his pardon papers returned
from Tomoka. Amid all the excitement, harried prison officials
had forgotten to make copies of all the paperwork -- including
the pardon decree.

And now what?

"I'd like to disappear into anonymity," Paey said.
"But I feel a responsibility to all the people who helped
me keep this issue alive.

"They gave me a human side in the eyes of the public,"
Paey said, adding he would like to get involved in increasing
awareness of pain management.

It's an acute issue, especially with more injured veterans
returning from Iraq with significant pain-management problems.

"I get letters from veterans all the time," Paey
said. "I'm gonna help as much as I can."

Paey was very kind in thanking this space for helping to tell
his story.

But ultimately, Richard Paey is a free man today because truth
eventually triumphed over prosecutorial bullies and because Charlie
Crist and the Cabinet saw a miscarriage of justice and demanded
compassion.

It was a good day for Richard Paey. It was a great day to
look up -- into the Florida sun.

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